Summit of the Anti-Americans

[Ryan Ruck]

Summit of the Anti-Americans

Alliances among America's enemies have been accelerating at an unprecedented rate. As reported by FrontPage throughout this year, Russia, Cuba and Venezuela have recently signed numerous economic and military agreements. Now, at the end of this month, the three nations are gathering once again for a series of historic meetings.

Raul Castro is scheduled to make his first visit to Venezuela since becoming the new President of Cuba after his elderly brother Fidel stepped aside earlier this year. The event is expected to take place in Caracas on November 26, and will involve the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an international cooperation organization in Latin America and the Caribbean, and Petrocaribe, a Caribbean oil alliance. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has long hoped to hold a summit dedicated to tackling the ongoing financial crisis, an event he has said would be an alternative to the recent G20 summit in Washington.

That same week, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will visit Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba following the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Peru.

The timing of these summits is no coincidence. "Viewing the transfer of power between U.S. President George W. Bush and President-elect Barack Obama as a key transition period," say Stratfor analysts, Medvedev's "intent is to remind the incoming U.S. president that [Medvedev] too can play in another power's near abroad."

The same thinking motivates Castro and Chavez as well – they need to "lay out the chessboard for the incoming U.S. President."

Chavez in particular desperately requires the prestige such meetings can provide him; Venezuelan voters go to the polls in state and local elections just a few days before his meeting with Castro, and the results may indicate that Chavez's popularity has fallen. Plummeting oil prices mean Chavez has far less leverage to bully his people, his neighbors and the United States, and less money to pay his mounting domestic and foreign bills. However, Medvedev's visit to Chavez will coincide with joint Russian exercises off the shore of Venezuela. Perhaps the military spectacle will be enough to reinvigorate Chavez's diminishing personal "brand", even briefly.

For Raul Castro, who has stood in his brother's long shadow for decades, these widely publicized gatherings let him position himself as a serious, recognized, long term leader among the world's – for lack of a better expression -- anti-American nations.

Such public relations considerations take on added importance in light of the current international economic crisis. Russia quite simply has less ready cash to spare in support of allies like Cuba and Venezuela, and evidence indicates that many existing arrangements between these countries aren't going according to plan. For example, Cuban negotiations with Russian oil giant LUKOIL to modernize two of its oil refineries "never proceeded beyond the very initial stages. A source close to the intergovernmental commission explained that Cuba received more profitable propositions from companies in other countries -- mainly the U.S."

Throughout both terms of the Bush administration, the three nations have positioned themselves as leaders of what they call a "pluri-polar", or "post-American", world. Yet the election of Barack Obama helped alter international perceptions about the United States virtually over night. The hoary old cartoonish image of America as the world's self-appointed "cowboy cop" suddenly seems comical. Can even the most hostile America bashers easily conjure up a mental image of this particular president elect wearing a big Stetson hat and firing six-shooters?

Regardless, as Ray Walser, Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America at the Heritage Foundation, told FrontPage, all three nations – Venezuela, Cuba and Russia – are "fixated upon historic illusions."

"Chavez's Bolivarian dream, Castro's vision of keeping the Communist flame alive, and the Putin/Medvedev view of a Great Russia will cause turmoil in the region," Walser predicts, "and test the mettle of the Obama Administration."

Walser's advice to the new President would be to "continue to press for real democracy in Venezuela and for a democratic transition for Cuba," while building what might be called counterbalancing alliances with other regional players such as Colombia, Chile and Brazil.

Pulitzer Prize winning Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer recently offered some advice of his own for the president elect, based upon what he's learned over many decades of covering the local "beat." He wrote:

"Obama will not want to squander his party's growing inroads into the Cuban-American community, and the state's non-Cuban Latinos, by coming across as too close to Chávez, or the Castro brothers."

Oppenheimer predicts that Barack Obama will lift restrictions on travel to Cuba, as he promised during his campaign. "He may even shake hands with Chávez at the Summit of the Americas next April in Trinidad and Tobago. But that's as far as he's likely to go."

It isn't in the interest of these anti-American leaders to make concessions to the United States, adds Oppenheimer. "They need to keep their conflicts with the United States alive to maintain a climate of imminent danger that justifies their authoritarian rule. (...) Don't expect big changes on that front."

Longtime observers may recall that the last time Chavez met with a man named Castro, the encounter was a strangely memorable one. Chavez has always idolized Raul's brother Fidel, modeling himself on the Cuban revolutionary and dictator. When the two got together back in 2000 to sign a $1-billion oil import agreement, the clownish Chavez cajoled his hero into joining him for, of all things, an off-key duet on live national radio.

Whether or not Raul Castro can be goaded into singing a nationalistic ballad with Chavez later this month remains to be seen (and heard). What seems certain is that Caracas, Havana and the Kremlin will continue to make music together for the short term at least, and it won't be very beautiful to American ears.

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What seems certain is that Caracas, Havana and the Kremlin will continue to make music together for the short term at least, and it won't be very beautiful to American ears.

No it won't and they forgot China and the rest of the growing Axis members.

In the long run when it finally dawns on America it's going to be blood red.

[American Patriot]

Lock and load!

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Bush Excluded by Latin Summit as China, Russia Loom

Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Latin American and Caribbean leaders gathering in Brazil tomorrow will mark a historic occasion: a region-wide summit that excludes the United States.

Almost two centuries after President James Monroe declared Latin America a U.S. sphere of influence, the region is breaking away. From socialist-leaning Venezuela to market-friendly Brazil, governments are expanding military, economic and diplomatic ties with potential U.S. adversaries such as China, Russia and Iran.

“Monroe certainly would be rolling over in his grave,” says Julia Sweig, director of the Latin America program at the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington and author of the 2006 book “Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century.”

The U.S., she says, “is no longer the exclusive go-to power in the region, especially in South America, where U.S. economic ties are much less important.”

Since November, Russian warships have engaged in joint naval exercises with Venezuela, the first in the Caribbean since the Cold War; Chinese President Hu Jintao signed a free-trade agreement with Peru; and Brazil invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a state visit.

“While the U.S. remains aloof from a region it no longer sees as relevant to its strategic interests, other countries are making unprecedented, serious moves to fill the void,” says Luiz Felipe Lampreia, Brazil’s foreign minister from 1995 until 2001. “Countries in the region are more aware than ever that they live in a globalized, post-American world.”

A Castro Triumph
The two-day gathering, called by Brazil at a beach resort in Bahia state, is also a diplomatic triumph for Cuban President Raul Castro, making his first trip abroad since taking over from his brother Fidel two years ago. The communist island was suspended from the hemisphere-wide Organization of American States in 1962 over its ties with the former Soviet Union.

“A lot of this is designed to stick it in the eye of the U.S.,” says Peter Romero, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere from 1999 to 2001. “But underlying the bluster, there’s a genuine effort to exploit the gap left by a distant and distracted U.S.”
The effort is most evident in the bloc of countries allied with the anti-American president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.

Bolivian President Evo Morales last month expelled the Drug Enforcement Administration, alleging that DEA agents were conspiring to overthrow him; U.S. President George W. Bush dismissed the charges as absurd and suspended trade privileges for the Andean nation.
Drug-War Defeat

In Ecuador, meanwhile, President Rafael Correa has refused to renew the lease on the U.S.’s only military outpost in South America, a critical platform for the U.S. war on drugs.

For Brazil, tomorrow’s summit caps a decade-long diplomatic drive to use its growing economic and political stability to play a bigger role in the world.
While little concrete action is expected from the first-ever Latin American and Caribbean Summit on Integration and Development, the fact that the U.S. wasn’t invited has symbolic importance, says Lampreia.

The summit reinforces such regional initiatives as the Union of South American Nations, which was formed in May by 12 countries to mediate conflicts such as political violence in Bolivia, bypassing the U.S.-dominated OAS.

Thomas Shannon, the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America, says the nature of American influence is only changing, not declining, as the region matures.

No Invitation Sought
The U.S. “didn’t ask to be invited” to the summit, he says, although it had discussed with Brazil and Mexico ways the meeting’s agenda could be used during the U.S.-backed Summit of the Americas, in April in Trinidad and Tobago.

“We don’t subscribe to the hydraulic theory of diplomacy that when one country is up, the other is down -- that if China and Russia are in the area our influence has somehow waned,” Shannon said in a telephone interview.
The fact that “there’s no warfare, weapons proliferation, suicide bombers or jihadists” in Latin America may make its issues “less urgent,” though no less important, Shannon said. The U.S. remains the region’s dominant investor and trading partner: Foreign aid to Colombia to fight drug traffickers and Marxist rebels totals $700 million a year, and remittances from Latin Americans living in the U.S. totaled $66.5 billion last year.

Monroe’s Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine, which dates back to 1823, declared Latin America off-limits to European powers. Whether welcomed by the region or not, it has been invoked whenever real or imagined security threats to U.S. interests arise, says Gaddis Smith, a retired Yale University historian of American foreign policy.

“Its essence is unilateralism; no Latin American country had any say in it,” says Smith, whose more than a dozen books on American foreign policy include “The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine.”

The real battle is for a larger share of the region’s abundant resources and expanding economies, and China has led the way.

Two-way trade with the region shot up 12-fold since 1995 to $110 billion last year, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. China’s share of the region’s imports also jumped, to 24 percent from 9.8 percent in 1990, while the U.S. share shrunk to 34 percent from 43 percent. Two years after reaching a bilateral free-trade agreement, China’s demand for copper made it Chile’s biggest export market in 2007, replacing the U.S.

Hu’s Trips
Since making his first of three trips to Latin America in 2004, China’s President Hu Jintao has spent more time in the region than Bush -- 22 days to 20 for the U.S. president. In October, as the global credit crunch dried up lending in the region, China joined the Inter-American Development Bank with a $350 million loan to finance small businesses. This month it pledged $10 billion in loans to state-controlled Petroleo Brasileiro SA so Brazil can develop the Western Hemisphere’s largest oil discovery since 1976.
“The Chinese play up the development side of diplomacy so much better than the Americans,” says William Ratliff, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who has a Ph.D. in Chinese and Latin American history. “Deals come with none or very few strings attached.”

Even Colombia, which is spending $115,000 a month lobbying the U.S. Congress to approve a stalled free-trade pact, signed an investment treaty last month with China. During this year’s U.S. campaign, President-elect Barack Obama said he opposed the accord over concerns that Colombia isn’t doing enough to stamp out violence against labor organizers.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe today canceled his plans for the summit to monitor rescue efforts involving 200,000 people affected by flooding over the weekend.

Arms Deals
Changing relationships are also evident in arms deals. Chavez turned to Russia for at least $4.4 billion in weapons after the U.S. blocked sales of aircraft parts. Brazil, the region’s largest economy, is also shopping around: Defense Minister Nelson Jobimsaid in Washington this month that his government will only buy weapons from countries that agree to transfer technology for local production.

Plans to purchase 36 new fighter jets, in which Boeing’s F- 18 is competing for a contract against Stockholm-based Saab AB and France’s Dassault Systemes SA, “can only be justified politically if they contribute to national development,” Jobim said.

Brazil may sign a deal with France for four nuclear submarines intended to help secure its oil basins in the Atlantic when French President Nicolas Sarkozy visits Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva this month.
Reactivating a Fleet

The U.S. plan to reassert its naval presence by reactivating the Fourth Fleet after 58 years to patrol the Caribbean has triggered negative reactions ranging from Chavez’s threat to sink the convoys to the more-diplomatic Lula’s demand for explanations from the Bush administration.

Latin American leaders are looking to Obama to restore relations after the Bush presidency’s initial pledges of greater engagement gave way to a focus on the 9/11 terror attacks and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the honeymoon with Obama may be short-lived, says Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter- American Dialogue in Washington. He says that the issues that have dominated Latin American relations -- including Cuba, immigration and U.S. trade barriers on agricultural products -- may remain in dispute.
“Latin America wants the U.S. to be engaged, but in very different terms that it has in the past,” says Shifter. “In any case, they’re not waiting around for the U.S. to change its mindset.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...efer=worldwide

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What's not clear about this?

Russia's Latin America aims still unclear: U.S. official

Mon Dec 22, 2008 6:52pm GMT
By Conor Sweeney

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The recent Russian naval visits to Cuba and Venezuela may be linked to August's Georgia war, said a U.S. diplomat Monday, though he said Washington was watching for the next Kremlin moves before taking a firm view.

On a first visit to Moscow that he linked to Russia's growing interest in South and Central America, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon said Russia may be considering a security presence there and warned of a regional arms race.

Just weeks after a Russian warship carried out joint exercises with Venezuela and then visited Cuba for the first time since the Cold War, Shannon said Washington would draw its conclusions based on future Russian actions.

"What would be telling however, is not this ship visit, it's the next one," said Shannon, responsible for Western Hemisphere relations in the State Dept.

"If the purpose of this ship visit was just to make a point about Russia's periphery, if its purpose was just to make a point about Georgia, then we probably won't see them again,"

"But if the Russians really are attempting to build a more longstanding relationship in the region, then they will look for ways to maintain some presence in their security relationship with partners," Shannon told Reuters in a shared interview.

Immediately after Russia's August war, U.S. warships traveled to Georgian Black Sea ports, a gesture that angered Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who asked how Washington would like it if Russia sent ships close to U.S. waters.

In September, Moscow dispatched two Tu-160 nuclear capable bombers to Venezuela and a naval flotilla there, led by the nuclear-powered battle cruiser "Peter the Great."

Because of its overwhelming naval presence, the United States was not threatened by Russia in the region, said Shannon.

"What's interesting for us about how Russia is engaging in the region is this is not the Soviet Union, they do not bring an ideological purpose to their engagement," he said.

Shannon said he did not directly discuss the Georgia conflict during a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. But he urged Russia to join patrols in the region if it intended a future presence.

ARMS SALES
Russia's trade interests include arms sales and, while Venezuela has the right to buy weapons, said Shannon, he was concerned an arms race might develop in the region or that decommissioned arms might be sold off to illegal groups.

"They're (arms) sold in a context, so when Venezuela buys $4 billion worth of weapons with very high-end aircraft, it has an impact in the region and one consequence of this is the Brazilian decision to modernize its armed forces," said Shannon.

Russia and Venezuela have signed 12 arms contracts worth $4.4 billion over the past two years, a Kremlin source said in September when Moscow announced it was providing Caracas with $1 billion in credit for more weapons purchases.

Arms sales to Caracas have included 24 Sukhoi fighter jets, dozens of helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov AK-103 assault rifles.

But Shannon said that, should Russia intend further naval voyages to the region, it should help block drug trafficking.

"If the Russian navy intends more Caribbean voyages, it shouldn't just sail around, but do something useful like help patrol the seas."

(Reporting by Conor Sweeney; Editing by Giles Elgood)

http://uk.reuters.com/articlePrint?a...4BL3ZT20081222